Colombo uses starvation, denial of medicine as weapons of war: LTTE

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 April 2009, 11:26 GMT]The Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) has been systematically limiting, delaying and blocking humanitarian supplies to the civilian population of Vanni committing a serious crime of war said a statement issued by the Political Division of the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) Friday. Questioning why the International Community has failed to demand the Sri Lankan government to allow humanitarian supplies reaching the civilians of Vanni, the LTTE statement issued in Tamil said it was condemning Colombo in strongest terms for using starvation as a weapon of war against civilians and for violating the Geneva Conventions.

Sri Lankan government has blocked the departure of a humanitarian ship scheduled to reach Vanni a few days ago. The ship is waiting for permission to leave from the Sri Lankan authorities, according to civil officials. The officials further said there are still more than 125,000 civilians inside the LTTE held area in 12 square kilometers.

There has been no supplies since April 02.

A request, made by the local authorities on 11 April said Dry Rations were urgently in order to alleviate the hunger of the IDPs.

An earlier situation report, for the month of March, issued by the District Secretariat said that ships brought only 1079.902 MT of food items whereas the requirement was 4950 MT for the month of March.

Civilians of Vanni were only eating once a day for the last 5 weeks and many of them have no supplies at all since the SLA stepped up its offensive into the safety zone aiming to capture the civilians.